Customer Spotlight: The Avera Health Story...Integrating the Enterprise

Introduction

Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center is a member of Avera Health Systems which stretches across 5 States, 231 Care Locations and employs over 12,000 Physicians and staff. The Avera McKennan Facility, as a stand-alone, is a 506 bed tertiary care hospital located in South Dakota offering award winning care and has recently been named one of the 100 most wired hospitals.

Avera McKennan has been a Meditech client running the Magic platform since 1989 and has always used a mixture of tools to solve their integration challenges. They exchanged HL7 data through an interface engine, addressed workflow automation using scripting and addressed print automation and downtime reporting through a manual paper processes.

Read on to find out how this prominent hospital system implemented the Summit Integration Toolset to streamline interoperability and integrate the enterprise.

Evaluating the Past and Looking into the Future

As mentioned above, the mixture of tools being used to meet integration needs was a challenge for Avera’s IT department and it was determined that there was a need for a more streamlined approach. Additionally, a strategic decision was made by the organization to migrate to one central EHR on the MEDITECH CS platform. In order to accomplish this, the following needed to occur:

• Conduct an integration assessment
• Build a new data center to support a centralized EHR model
• Implement integration tools through partnership with one integration provider

Integration Assessment

It was decided that the mixed integration tool approach did not make efficient use of hospital resources. After conducting an integration assessment it was determined that the current interface engine in operation was lacking in functionality and the organization would look toward evaluation and purchase of a new integration engine. Additionally, Avera McKennan wanted to contract with one integration technology partner who could also streamline and assist with the workflow, print automation and downtime reporting needs. There were numerous factors that contributed to the decision to move forward with the implementation of a new interface engine.

Meeting the EHR initiative

To meet the EHR initiative and prepare for the migration to Meditech CS, Avera McKennan implemented a centralizeddata center with over 175 servers. The Avera Enterprise created a phased approach to migrate all facilities from Meditech Magic to CS. Avera McKennan was the first facility to migrate with the next 31 facilities to go live through 2010. With the data center in place it was now confirmed that the enterprise would partner with one integration company to solve all integration initiatives at the organization.

A Partnership is Formed

Avera evaluated numerous integration partners but only one, Summit Healthcare, was able to meet all of Avera’s integration needs. Summit Healthcare provided an integration toolset that included HL7 interface technology leveraging Microsoft Biztalk, workflow automation scripting technology, print automation and a downtime reporting tool.

Summit Healthcare is proud to serve Avera Health’s current and future integration needs surrounding healthcare integration. At the close of a very successful implementation of the Summit Integration Suite and other flagship integration products such as the Summit Scripting Toolkit, CS Print Manager and the Summit Downtime Reporting System; Avera IT staff commented on how nice it was to be able to sleep at night again without having to deal with integration issues that were commonplace with their old integration products.
- Terry LaPointe, Senior Project Manager at Summit Healthcare

The first phase of implementation included the Summit Interface Suite which provided a robust interface engine leveraging Microsoft Biztalk. In just 30 days, over 70 interfaces were converted using the new engine to meet the Meditech CS conversion timeline which pleased the administration and freed up much needed IT resource hours. The IT staff quickly recognized how scalable the Summit Interface Suite was when they saw that that, after only a short time, there were over 94 interfaces live and over 1 million messages processed per week. The “sleepless” nights were over; Avera McKennan had a stable Interface Engine in place.

The next phase of the implementation was to include implementing the Summit Scripting Toolkit across the enterprise. While there was already an existing scripting toolkit vendor in place, Avera had committed to one integration partner and after further evaluation determined that the Summit Scripting Toolkit was more robust in functionality and could easily accomplish and meet the demands of the departmental needs for workflow automation. The highlighted script solutions included 835 remits, dictionary conversion and elimination of redundant manual tasks across ALL departments.

The final phase of implementation included print automation and downtime reporting. The Meditech CS platform did not include print automation while the Meditech Magic platform had featured this functionality. Due to this lack of functionality, there was an immediate need for print automation across all departments. Summit Healthcare provided the Summit CS Print Manager product for print automation which was implemented across all departments and ultimately accounted for 180 scheduled jobs running daily. The print automation component integrated with the Summit Healthcare Downtime Reporting product and provided Avera a safe, reliable solution in the event of Meditech or Network downtime. The Summit Downtime Reporting application encrypts the scheduled reports and distributes them across the enterprise to local PC’s. The reports are then decrypted using a defined password and are available for immediate printing and viewing capabilities. Again, there were less “sleepless” nights ahead for the Avera organization.

Looking Ahead

With the Integration toolset in place and the partnership formed, Avera has seen improved patient care and rapid access to critical data for clinicians and other departments. Through a reliable interface engine, workflow automation scripting technology and a print automation/downtime reporting solution, the hospital is running smoothly on all cylinders. Department and IT training has been standardized and the support and transfer of knowledge is now easily accomplished. The ability to work with one integration vendor has proved to be extremely rewarding and has enabled a strong relationship to form.

We at Avera Health are extremely pleased with the Summit Healthcare HL7 Adapter/BizTalk 2006 Integration Engine. The Summit implementation folks were great to work with and helped us GO LIVE with over 70 interfaces in a multi-hospital environment in just 30 days. Today we have 94 interfaces running like clockwork and we are processing well over a million messages a week through the Summit Engine. We have plans to add on more interfaces as we continue to migrate our regional facilities to Meditech Client Server.
- Jason Bolssen, Integration Engineer at Avera McKennan

To learn more about Avera Health, visit them online at www.averahealth.org.

To learn more about Summit Healthcare Services, visit them online at www.summit-healthcare.com.